Queen's Birthday - 3 Day Bendigo Bush Orienteering
Carnival

Good luck to everybody that's going this weekend! This
is one of the feature events for the year - without a doubt, some of the
best orienteering in Victoria. It would be great if somebody could take some
pictures and send over a brief article for the next Emus Online.

Joyce has kindly arranged dinner on Saturday Night at
the Empire State Hotel in Inglewood. The booking is at 6:30 pm on Saturday
evening - and all are welcome to attend. To allow Joyce to confirm numbers,
please RSVP directly to her on 9723 6740.

Event Details

Event Name

State Series #4 (Short)

Date

2007-06-09

Club

BG

Region

Bendigo

Suburb/Location

Wedderburn Junction

Map

Korong Spur

Fireban
District

North West

Directions to
Start

Take the Calder Highway
through Inglewood. 7 k past Inglewood is the old Kurting Mechanics
Institute Hall. Just past this turn right onto the Kurting-Boort Road.
After 10 k turn left onto the Wedderburn Serpentine Road. After 5 k look
for signs and the entrance to the Mt Korong Flora and Fauna Reserve on
the right.

Melway Ref

VicRoads Ref

29 E9

Organiser

Julie Flynn-Neil Barr

Course Setter

Julie Flynn

Controller

Craig Feuerherdt-Jim Russell

Start Time(s)

12.00-2.00

Courses

7 courses:
http://www.vicorienteering.asn.au/adm

Remarks

Middle distance style course
setting. It has been raining and the rock slabs are wet. Studs advised.

If you want to be in the
official chasing start for your course, you will need to run the same
cours

Nillumbik Junior selected for Australia's Junior World Orienteering Championship
Team

Nillumbik Emu's Rob Fell was successful in gaining a
place in the recently selected JWOC (Junior World Championship) Team last
weekend. Rob, currently studying at ANU in Canberra - takes his orienteering
quite seriously and has been a member (and Captain) of the Victorian Team in
recent years. Two other Victorian Juniors were selected for the team -
Morton Neve (from Melbourne Forest Racers) and Belinda Lawford (from
Eureka/Ballarat).

That's Rob on the left....but congratulations to all
of the Fells - we're all aware just how much effort you guys put into
orienteering and street-orienteering (in the Western Suburbs). Rob's
selection is a great acknowledgement of both his skills and your family's
commitment to orienteering in general.

Queen's Birthday Weekend - Orienteering Opportunities in
Melbourne
For Melbourne Orienteers that are not taking part in the Bendigo 3 Day
events....

The folks that have
been taking part in the informal Monday Night events - often referred to as
training events (but generally good fun and good company) - are running low-key
events on Saturday, Sunday and Monday of the long weekend. We will run normal
score courses - but with more controls for even more fun - with sections for
runners or walkers. The format we've used for weekend events previously is to
enjoy the run and then retire to a nearby coffee shop or similar for afternoon
tea and course comparison.

Each course will
have a maximum score of 100 - allowing us to aggregate scores for the weekend -
out of a total of 300. There is no charge for these activities - we provide
everything that you would see at a normal street-orienteering event...except the
public liability insurance. All we ask participants is that they recognise that
they are responsible for their own safety and the result of their own actions.
For more information check out the Melbourne Street-Orienteering Home Page at
http://street.orienteering.com.au/

Geoff Hudson
Phone: Mob. 0407 998 240 Hm. 9888 8121

"Disabled" Athlete wins Silver Medal at National Level

Oscar Pistorius is a man happy to be known as the "fastest
thing on no legs". In March he won a silver medal at the South African national
athletics championships, running the 400 metres in 46.56 seconds. It was an
able-bodied race, yet Pistorius is a bilateral amputee who uses carbon fibre
"cheetah" legs similar to the ones Aimee Mullins (see below) wears. The
International Association of Athletics Federations is now debating whether
Pistorius should be allowed to run in able-bodied races at future international
meetings. Those who argue against him doing so claim his legs might give him an
unfair advantage.

Most prosthetic leg specialists say such concerns are
ill-founded, for now at least. The prosthetic legs, which are made by the
Icelandic company Ossur, act like springs which store energy as the foot is
pushed into the ground, and then return much of it to the runner, just as
tendons do in a natural ankle. However, unlike natural legs, the Ossur
prosthetics lack the muscles to generate their own power, and so provide much
less energy overall than natural legs, the experts say.

That may be about to change. Herr, who has made it his
life's work to design improved prosthetic legs, is being funded by the US
Department of Veterans Affairs to work on a prosthetic ankle that returns more
energy in each stride. Inside each prosthetic are battery-powered motors that do
a similar job to muscles. Last week, he wore two of these brand-new ankles for
the first time. "It was absolutely amazing," he says. "It's like hitting the
moving walkway at the airport." People wearing the new prosthetic have been
shown to expend 20 per cent less energy when walking than with a standard
prosthetic, and Herr says their gait also looks completely natural.

Advances like these are shifting perceptions of
disability. Herr mentions a 17-year-old girl who has decided to go ahead with an
operation to amputate a damaged leg because, he says, she thinks a new
prosthetic will give her more athletic ability than she has now. For his own
part, Herr claims he would not swap his prosthetic legs for natural legs, even
if he could. "Would you buy a computer system if you were told you couldn't
upgrade it for 50 years?" he says.

His goal is to create an artificial leg that outperforms a
natural leg in every way. In the meantime he will focus on specialised designs
for particular purposes: one that allows him to run faster than other humans,
another that allows him to walk more efficiently and a third that allows him to
climb better. "I mean, Aimee and I can just switch legs in a matter of 15
seconds." That's not something able-bodied people can do.

Footnote - The celebrity magazine People ranked
fashion model and actress Aimee Mullins among the world's 50 most beautiful
people. She is president of the Women's Sports Foundation, whose goal is to
advance the lives of girls and women through sport and physical activity, and is
a record-breaking athlete. Mullins is also a double amputee, having lost both
her legs below the knee as a child.